�Paradise Lost

Satan as a hero

• In spite of having so many unambiguous sketches of Satan in The Bible as well as other religious scriptures and the holy books, Milton draws a picture of Satan which actually erects him with honor and it makes a controversy among the readers as well as the critics.
• Milton quotes a mistake, pride, committed by Satan and he (Satan) is cursed. But it actually generates sympathy for him and also it shows the unjust decision of God.
• He also talks about the punishment of evil deeds of Satan as well as his followers.
• Milton knowingly supports Satan and draws his character like a hero and he develops the character of Satan being sympathized and devotes much concentration to make him the best creation.

• The epic starts after Satan and the insurgent angels were thrown out of paradise and archives man’s first defiance and consequent descent from paradise.
• The character of Satan drawn by Milton has long been a concern of disagreement among the readers as well as the critics.
• In the epic, Satan is over and over again a shape, represented by Milton, with whom the readers as well as the critics can empathize.
• Satan is well thought-out in cooperation with the catastrophic anti- hero.

• The epic, Paradise Lost, specifies first defiance of human being in addition to consequent descend from the charmed paradise.
• It is mainly distinguished for Milton’s compassionate dealing or treatment of Satan, and certainly he is equally the anti-hero as well as antagonist of this poem.
• All the way through the semicircle of the epic, his (Satan’s) exposition progressively metamorphoses from archangel to evil spirit and finally to snake.
• The author, Milton, presented a very dissimilar character of Satan than any other writer or artist which had been seen aforementioned to the time in both art and literature.

• Satan was one of the most significant of God's archangels, other than revolted when God confirmed the Son being above all the archangels in magnificence.
• Satan convinced a third of the archangels to revolt with him, and affirmed warfare on God.
• Satan was beaten by the Son and shed into hell or misery with all the other mutineer archangels.
• Satan tells Beelzebub that "the mind is its own place, and can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n." Book 1, lines 254-5 and Satan tries to make the best of the situation in hell, explaining "better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n." Book 1, line 263.

• Perhaps the most renowned quote regarding Paradise Lost is Blake's proclamation that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it."
• While Blake may have meant something other than what is usually comprehend from the line, the thought that Satan is the hero, or at slightest a type of hero, in Paradise Lost is prevalent.
• However, the development, or, more specifically, deterioration, of Satan's character from Book I through Book X furnishes a greatly dissimilar and much apparent representation of Milton's approach toward Satan.

• The writers as well as the critics of the Romantic period sophisticated the concept that Satan was a Promethean hero, hollowing himself in opposition to an unjust God.
• Most of these writers based their thoughts on the portrait of Satan in the first two books of Paradise Lost.
• In those books, Satan ascends off the lake of fire and conveys his gallant words still challenging God.
• Satan advises the other dissenters that they can build "a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" (I, 255) and appends, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n" (I, 263).

• Satan furthermore materializes stout for the reason that the first two books spotlight on Hell and the fallen angels.
• The reader's introduction to the poem is all the way through Satan's point of view.
• Milton, by beginning in medias res presents Satan the first scene in the poem, a fact that makes Satan the first sympathetic character.
• Also, Milton's writing in these books, and his characterization of Satan, construct the archfiend comprehensible and etched in the mind of the reader.

• Mammon advocates living to themselves in hell, free, and to none accountable, preferring hard liberty before the easy yoke of servile pomp and he advocates a new course of action: attack mortal man, who Beelzebub describes as less in power and excellence (than themselves), but favored more by God.
• These facts unquestionably craft Satan the most fascinating character in the poem — but they do not compose him the hero.
• For the reason that the reader has the sense of hearing Satan's edition first, the reader is uninformed of the embellishment and absolute lies that are parts of Satan's outstanding verbal communications.

• In addition, the reader can without difficulty fail to notice the actuality that Milton asserts that, whatsoever supremacies and aptitudes the fallen angels encompass in Hell, those commands and capability approach from God, who could at any instant seize them away.
• Milton's magnificent poetic style locates Satan up as daring in Books I and II.
• The appearance of Satan formulates him give the impression superior than he in point of fact is and in the beginning illustrates the reader to Satan's point of view.
• Supplementary, for the reason that all of the other characters in the poem — Adam, Eve, God, the Son, the angels — are fundamentally categories to a certain extent than characters, Milton expend additional imaginative liveliness on the improvement of Satan so that all the way through the poem, Satan's character sustains the reader's concentration and, conceivably, empathy — at least to a degree

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• No matter how luminously Milton shaped the disposition of Satan, the principal devil cannot be the hero of the poem.
• For Milton, Satan is the opponent who prefers to consign an act that goes in opposition to the fundamental commandments of God, that confronts the incredibly temperament of the cosmos.
• Satan endeavors to obliterate the ladder of Heaven from beginning to end of his revolt. Satan entrusts this act not because of the totalitarianism of God but because he wishes what he wants to a certain extent than what God wishes.

• Satan is an extremely egoist.
• His benefits until the end of time go round on his individual requirements. Contrasting Adam, who thrashes out a diversity of subjects matter with Raphael, rarely revealing his personal wishes, Satan distinguishes the whole thing in conditions of what will occur to him.
• A factual Promethean / Romantic hero has to revolt in opposition to an unjust oppression in an endeavor to accurate a erroneous or assist someone a lesser amount of opportune.
• If Satan had been Prometheus, he would have embezzled fire to temperate himself, not to facilitate Mankind.

• Milton gives the readers an idea on the subject of his personal approach in the direction of Satan in the technique the character deteriorates or is besmirched in the development of the poem.
• Satan is outstanding, even commendable in Books I and II. By book IV, he is misrepresented.
• In his speech that begins Book IV, Satan announces that Hell is everywhere he himself is.
• Away from his supporters and permitted several introspections, Satan before now divulges a supplementary inconsistence character

• Satan's intentions transform the same as the story proceeds.
• In the beginning, Satan desires to carry on the struggle for liberty from God.
• Afterward his purpose for ongoing the struggle has been magnificence and prominence.
• Subsequently, the enticement of Adam and Eve is merely an approach to interrupt God's strategies.
• Furthermore, at the end, Satan appears to declare that he has performed as he has to amaze the other devils in Hell.
• This deterioration of intention demonstrates moderately a collapse.

• Despite the fact that Satan is not the epic hero in Paradise Lost, he at epochs does boundary on
• tragedy.
• As the luck would have it, he also restricts on comedy.
• The humorous constituents associated with Satan obtain from the ludicrousness of his situation.
• As a mutineer, he confronts an unstoppable antagonist, God, with supremacy that is settled him by his enemy.
• God just dolls with Satan in encounter. Satan is, in actual fact, cartoonish while he and Belial take pride over the accomplishment of their hellish cannon in Book VI.
• Satan and Belial plunk laughing at the disarray they have reasoned, other than they are ignorant of the mountains and boulders just on the subject of the land on their cranium.

• If each and every one of Paradise Lost were lying on the stage of the encounter scene, the epic would be humorous.
• Other than Satan's persuasion of Adam and Eve shift the mischievous sprite nearer to catastrophe.
• Satan's intentions in obliterating the human pair may be debatable, nevertheless the consequence and its insinuations are not. Satan transports the humans downward and reasons their elimination from heaven.

• He also makes available the approach to recovery meant for those humans who prefer generously to follow God.
• On the other hand, Satan offers not anything for himself.
• Hell is somewhere Satan is for the reason that he has no path to retort God.
• Contrasting humanity, Satan as well as the other fallen angels have already conserved their destinies.
• They survive until the end of time in the company of the comprehension of Hell.

• Satan entitles to intelligence the Macbeth of Shakespeare.
• Both in cooperation with the characters are outstanding manufactures of evil.
• Both are laudable after an approach, but both are condemned.
• Both are philosophical with reference to the life after death.
• Satan is on familiar terms with that he have got to remain in Hell; Macbeth utters that he would "jump the life to come," if he could slaughter Duncan with no effect on Earth.
• Both in cooperation with the characters are the pouring strength in their individual mechanisms.
• And lastly both construct a type of Hell; Macbeth's on Earth, Satan's in the cosmos

• Satan was called Lucifer in paradise previous to his defiance, he was one of God's preferred angels in anticipation of his pride or arrogance obtains in the approach and he revolves away from God.
• Satan transports lots of paradise's archangels with himself, on the other hand, and sovereignty because ruler in hell.
• He carries on an everlasting encounter by way of God as well as decency for the souls of human races.
• He initially was an archangel with a single mistake, pride or arrogance, other than all the way through the tale he became bodily as well as ethically more and more dishonest or corrupt.

• Satan, now back on earth, has a moment of doubt and despair in which he says that "the hell I suffer seems a heav'n and he notices that they are both not equal, as their sex not equal seemed.
• Satan explains that Adam's "eye sublime declared absolute rule." Book 4, lines 300-1 and he hears Adam tell Eve that they must not eat of the Tree of Knowledge, calling it "the only sign of our obedience left, or else God will kill them.
• Satan, having just learned that the Tree of Knowledge is forbidden to Adam and Eve, ponders ignorance, is that their happy state, / the proof of their obedience and their faith?

• According to Coleridge, “the character of Satan is pride and sensual indulgence, finding in self the sole motive of action. It is the character so often seen in little on the political stage.
• It exhibits all the restlessness, temerity and cunning which have marked the mighty hunters of mankind from Nimrod to Napolean.
• Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven”.
• Milton’s intention was to write an epic of cosmic proportions and this scheme required its characters to be impressive.

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• The most impressive and dramatic character in the first book of Paradise Lost is Satan, the great enemy of God and Man.
• Enmity is his role in the story and he must be made equal to his task as
• the fittest adversary of the omnipotent.
• Hence, there is an ‘epic necessity’ that he should be made sublime, exalter over the average and should be endowed with noble and heroic qualities.
• In Book I he is not presented as an embodiment of the principle of evil, like Shakespeare’s Iago of Othello.

• Had it been so, Satan would never have impressed us as a tragic character.
• In fact it was Milton’s plan to make Satan appeal to the readers as a tragic hero at the beginning.
• So, he is invested with an extra- ordinary, almost heroic grandeur and is projected as a mixture of good and evil, like Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• Following the Aristotelian concept of tragic hero, Satan is represented by Milton as an intermediate personage.
• He is endowed with so many heroic qualities that Dryden and many other subsequent critics had thought that Milton actually intended to make Satan the hero of the epic.

• The large sympathy with which Milton treated him has also tempted many a critic to observe that Satan was actually Milton’s self projection and that through him the great poet revealed to the world: “his own proud spirit of independence and superiority to the blows of fortune”.
• Satan possesses all the essential characteristics of a real hero.
• He is stately in appearance and his deportment is majestic.

• Even after his fall from heaven he stood like a tower, in shape and gesture proudly eminent and his form had still retained much of its original brightness.
• He is a character of indomitable, promethean spirit.
• Even after his defeat and downfall, his spirit is undaunted and he is determined to wage eternal war against God.
• His brave soul is loath to acknowledge defeat.
• Defeat could not curb the independence of his spirit.

• How brave are the words with which he infuses hope in the frustrated Beelzebub:

“What though the field be lost?

All is not lost; the unconquerable will,

And Study of revenge, immortal hate

And courage never to submit or yield;

And what is else not to be overcome?”

• Satan is a revolutionary anarchist of superhuman dimensions. He is the leader of the Angels who, at his investigation, had revolted against God.
• When God ordained that His son would head the host of Heavenly angels, Satan rebelled and one-third of the angelic population came over to his side.
• The rebels had clung to him even after they had been vanquished by God and thrown into Hell because of his strong will, firmness of purpose and above all, his indomitable courage.

• When Beelzebub despairs over the irredeemably hopeless situation, Satan says, “to be weak is miserable”.
• He has self – confidence enough to believe that with strength of mind one ‘can make a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven’.
• Milton has supposedly projected his own spirit of independence through Satan.
• Satan would not sue for peace so that God might allow him and his followers to go back to Heaven.
• Coupled with his inordinate ambition there dwells in his heart an ardent desire for freedom and abhorrence of slavery.
• In his estimation it will be ‘better to reign’ in Hell than serve in Heaven’.

• Satan is a remarkably efficient leader. His capacity for leadership is evident from the moment he breaks the ‘horrid silence’ with his bold words to Beelzebub.
• His speech beginning with ‘awake, arise, or be forever fallen’, addressed to his followers is considered as the most heartening call given by a commander to his defeated army.
• His speeches show him to be an effective demagogue and a facetious leader who appears to the emotions and prejudices of the masses in order to win them over and thereby again power.

• His powerful speeches electrify the fallen angels with fresh courage so much so that they are roused from the stupefaction.
• His strong personality has the charisma of an attractive leader.
• He is moved to tears at their pitiable condition and their ruin for which none but he himself is responsible.
• Indeed, there is one of the humanizing touches in the character of Satan and Shows that he has still distinctive traces of a better nature

• Satan is full of devices and his resourcefulness is worthy of a better cause.
• When he finds that force is not right technique to avenge on God then he tried to tease God by ‘fraud and guile’, and so he conceives the idea of seeking revenge upon God indirectly through man.
• Despite all his heroic qualities, however, Satan degenerates and he degenerates from a brave hero to a cunning, consummate villain.
• And it is pride which is the cause of his degeneration.
• He is an embodiment of obdurate pride

• Self-exaltation is the motif of all his conduct.
• Satan says, ‘We are ordained to govern, not to serve’. Out of this pride arises his ‘study of revenge, immortal hate’, the scorn of repentance and finally its impossibility.
• Even in defeat he never dreams of submission.

• Commenting on the presentation of Satan’s character, Hazlitt has justly observed that the fierceness of his pride.
• Satan’s loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought by his power of inflicting misery on others.
• His love of power and contempt for suffering is never relaxed from the highest pitch of intensity.

• He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one life, “Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, doing or suffering”.
• He is not only proud; he is also envious, malicious, revengeful, and crafty and has an inordinate love of evil.
• In fact Satan is a Machiavellian character of the Renaissance with a lust for unlimited power and not bereft of admirable qualities.
• But his megalomania, his intensity of self-exaltation, destroys all that is good in him.
• As Coleridge puts it, Milton has carefully marked in his Satan the intense selfishness, the alcohol of egotism, which would rather reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
• But around the character he has thrown in singularity of daring, grandeur of sufferance and a revived splendor which constitute the very height of sublimity.

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